…some mothers [DOT 14/5/23]

…I know it’s mother’s day in the states…though some places already did that…one of them being a spot that likes to claim it’s home to the mother of parliaments…which sets it apart from…some places

The crowds gathered peacefully, jostling outside the home of the man they call the “saviour of Pakistan”, hoping for a glimpse. Two days earlier, these same streets in the city of Lahore had resembled a warzone as tens of thousands of protesters violently took to the streets, ransacking buildings, burning cars, throwing petrol bombs and clashing with police, with several dying from gunshot wounds.

On Saturday, however, there was calm. Late the previous night, former prime minister Imran Khan had finally returned to his home, following some of the most tumultuous days in the country’s recent history that saw him arrested on Islamabad high court premises by 100 paramilitary officers. He was detained for two days but then, to the surprise of many observers, was granted bail and allowed to walk free after his arrest was declared illegal by Pakistan’s supreme court. With Khan released, the violence eased.

The devotion felt towards 70-year-old Khan was evident in the hundreds gathered at his gate. “Khan is the only leader for Pakistan,” said Shaf Ali, 23, an IT worker. “We will protest for Khan again as he is the only hope in Pakistan and he is fighting for us.”
[…]
Now free again, at least for the time being, Khan has vowed mass protests on a scale never seen before in Pakistan until general elections, due in October, are called early. If they happen, and Khan is allowed to enter the contest, the consensus is that he would gain an overwhelming victory. The government, meanwhile, has pledged to re-arrest Khan as soon as legally able, indicating that Pakistan’s volatile days are likely far from over.

“Today, our democracy is hanging by a thread,” said Khan in his first public address since his release, describing those who had gone after him as a “mafia”. His speech was not aired on television.

He also stepped up his crusade against Pakistan’s military, who for decades have controlled politics, through coups or backdoor influence, but whom few have ever dared directly criticise for fear of being imprisoned, abducted or killed with impunity. Khan blamed the armed forces chief Asim Munir for ordering his arrest and accused him of being above the rule of law.

…I guess you could say there’s a pretty strong argument to be made that the context makes a big difference…& the parallels in some of it are…misleading…but in a compare & contrast sort of a way…not to mention some more direct ways…it’s a lot to think about?

Khan had previously been a close ally of the military, coming to power with their tacit support in 2018, though he denies the army rigged his election. But after two years of working closely together, the relationship fell apart and he was removed from office. Since then Khan has accused the military and the government that ousted him of colluding with “foreign powers”, publicly blaming the US government for being involved, which it denied. In Saturday’s speech, he told his followers that the “army chief stabbed me in the back and brought to power Pakistan’s most infamous criminals”.

As he made increasingly provocative allegations against top military figures – the most feared men in Pakistan – accusing them of being involved in international conspiracies and assassination attempts on his life, many felt that Khan was playing with fire. The allegations against him grew, and he now faces almost 100 cases involving corruption, sedition and even blasphemy, and if convicted, would likely be disqualified from politics.

Analysts agreed that the decision to grant Khan bail has emboldened him. His anti-military and anti-west narratives are increasingly popular, as is his representation of himself as a man of the people at a time of economic strife in Pakistan, where inflation is at record highs and several people have died in queues for food rations.

…the problem with heroes defined by how bad the other guy is, though…is they don’t have to be good guys to clear that bar?

Yet for all Khan’s bravado, not all are convinced that he truly intends to end the role of the military in politics, given his longstanding relations with the establishment, and suggested he was instead trying to sow division to enable his return to power.

Husain Haqqani, a scholar and former Pakistani ambassador, said Khan was “a populist who is not against the establishment’s worldview; he just wants to control it.”

“Could Imran Khan be taken as a politician believing in civilian supremacy? I doubt it,” said Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, an influential former senator and former adviser to the prime minister on human rights. “A major part of his political strategy since his ouster has been to make desperate attempts to repair his strained relations with the military.”

…but…it’ll be fine…right?

Nonetheless, Khokhar said that Khan’s political popularity was unquestionable. “With inflation through the roof and now the judiciary by his side, it is safe to assume that his return to power is certain if elections were to be held. But will the military allow that to happen? Only time will tell.”

…right?

Interior minister Rana Sanaullah, who vowed the government would arrest Khan again, claimed Khan’s objective was to “spread anarchy and chaos” in the country. “Since 2014, he has created a cult,” he said.

Sharif has given the authorities 72 hours to track down all those involved in the violence, which he alleged was “planned and instigated” by Khan. “There is no example of such enmity towards the country and brutality in the country’s history,” the prime minister said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/13/pakistan-democracy-imran-khan-return-home-arrest

…a populist with an affiliated mob option & the judiciary in his back pocket that’s at odds with the military & looking to displace the executive branch of things legislative as part of a crusade to bring an end to acknowledged corruption…hard to imagine such a thing, really…I’m sure you’ll agree…hope for the best?

Businesses from outside China “are not foreigners, but family,” said Wang Wentao, China’s commerce minister. State media reported that the chief executives of Apple, Pfizer and Procter & Gamble were at the forum, held in late March. Many of the dozens of business leaders there were on their first trip to China since the country had closed its markets to the world and derailed its economy with harsh Covid policies.

Mr. Wang pledged to remove obstacles preventing firms from investing more — 2023, he declared, was “Invest in China year.”

The good will did not last long.

…uhhh…plan for the worst?

The recent targeting of consulting and advisory firms with foreign ties through raids, detainments and arrests has reignited concerns about doing business in China. Executives, whether at midsize manufacturers or large corporations, are exploring how to reduce the threats to their businesses and protect their employees.

Over the last few years, as China has grown less business-friendly, some companies and investors were already starting to consider, for the first time in decades, whether the risks of investing in the country might outweigh the potential benefits.

The supply chain disruptions wrought by “zero-Covid” awakened companies to the downside of reliance on China. The geopolitical standoff between Washington and Beijing elevated the risk, forcing many multinationals to draft contingency plans for an alternative to China and to find ways to “decouple.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/business/china-anti-espionage-law.html

…as distinct from un-couple, I guess

…consciously or otherwise

Mr. Xi has warned that China must fight back against a campaign by the United States to contain and suppress the country’s rise. In this worldview, foreign rivals are using spies to weaken China’s economy; Russia is not treated as a pariah but a vital partner in blunting the NATO menace; and the diplomatic stage is a place to assert China’s influence and reshape the global order in its favor.

At home, the authorities have sent a chill across foreign businesses by launching a nationwide crackdown on consulting firms with international ties. China’s state broadcaster accused Western countries of trying to steal sensitive information in key industries with the help of consulting firms that help investors navigate the murky Chinese economy.

Abroad, China’s efforts to improve ties with Europe — to drive a wedge between the United States and some of its most important allies — have been complicated by Beijing’s closeness to Moscow. On a visit to Germany this week, China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, dismissed criticism that Beijing wasn’t doing enough to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. He also warned that China would retaliate if the European Union decided to impose sanctions on Chinese companies accused of supplying Russia with technology for its military.

China’s increasingly muscular approach has also raised concerns in Canada. That government accused a Chinese diplomat of intimidating and gathering family information on a Canadian lawmaker who was an ardent critic of Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims. After Ottawa ordered the Chinese official to leave, Beijing expelled a Canadian diplomat in Shanghai in a tit-for-tat move.
[…]
The campaign against consulting firms has puzzled observers given China’s recent assurances that it was open for business again after three years of strict Covid measures. But the firms’ access to data about Chinese industries, including defense, finance and science, appeared to have triggered alarms in the country’s security apparatus, which now takes precedence over economic decision making.

The party has long wrestled with the tension between its distrust of the outside world and the need to maintain global links to power its growth. Mr. Xi, however, underscored at the annual legislative session in March that he prioritized security, calling it the “foundation of development.”

“President Xi has made it pretty clear that security trumps development,” said Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was director for China at the National Security Council under President Obama.

“If that requires cracking some skulls at the consulting firms and scaring off foreign capital in the process, then that’s a price that he appears willing to pay,” Mr. Hass added.

Ultimately, Beijing is betting that access to China’s expansive market is simply too enticing for foreign companies and governments to give up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/world/asia/china-xi-security-economy.html

…so…about them mothers, then…elsewhere…in a spot notably missing its longstanding maternal influence…but still flatters itself that its commons are that mother of parliaments…it’s all much more civilized…so…uhhh…nothing to see here?

The more unequal a society becomes, the more oppressive its laws must be. This, I think, explains new acts that would not be out of place in a police state. So vague and broad are the powers granted to the police under last year’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and this year’s Public Order Act that it is no longer clear where their abuse begins and ends.

…well…ok…that sounds bad…sure…but it’s george monbiot…he’s always got to go at least a bit overboard, right?

At two o’clock on the morning of the coronation, the Metropolitan police, using the Police Act, arrested three people in Soho for carrying rape alarms. The police claimed they were acting on intelligence that rape alarms might be used to frighten the horses that would later be parading elsewhere.

…it’s a wossname…contractual obligation or something

The people they arrested were volunteers working for Westminster city council as “Night Stars”, helping to stop the sexual harassment of women. They give rape alarms to women who might need them. The alarms are funded by the Home Office. Night Stars volunteers wear pink tabards emblazoned with the logo of their partner organisation … the Metropolitan police. Yet the three volunteers who were arrested were cuffed for three hours and held for 14 before being released on bail.

Why would the police arrest their own partners? What was the “intelligence” on which they were acting? If they were really worried about rape alarms being misused, why did they not simply confiscate them? It looks to me like the old paso doble between police and press. Two weeks before, the Mail on Sunday had run a front-page story headlined “Extremists’ vile plot to spook King’s horses with rape alarms: Fears protesters planning to sabotage Charles’ Coronation could cause ‘serious injuries or even deaths’ … as eco-zealot groups set to join forces to cause chaos”.

…& this, folks…is why people take a dim view of the daily mail & its royals über alles bullshit

The Mail produced precisely zero evidence that environmental or republican activists were planning such a thing. But if the police wanted to find people carrying these devices, they knew where to go. The arrests were used by the Mail as a vindication of its story. Though Westminster council had explained to the newspaper that those arrested were its volunteers, the Mail described them as “militant activists … arrested over a plot to throw rape alarms at horses during King Charles’s Coronation”.

…what’s a word for the sourcing equivalent of circular logic…other than bullshit…maybe two words…rhymes with make news?

Were it not for the patient work of the journalist Mic Wright, that’s how the story would have stood. Police and press are two tails of the same beast. The head of media at the Metropolitan police is a former crime reporter at the Daily Mail.

The new laws were also used pre-emptively to arrest campaigners from Republic and Just Stop Oil, and a journalist filming them, to thwart their vile plot to wear dangerous T-shirts and hold seditious placards. For good measure, Animal Rising said the police had rounded up some of its activists at a training session miles away from the coronation. Safer to arrest everyone who might dissent.

These laws have been introduced just as public trust in the police has collapsed. Louise Casey’s report, released in March, found the Metropolitan police to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic. Yet the police have now been granted discretionary powers so broad that they can shut down any protest, on the vaguest suspicion that it might prove to be “disruptive”. It’s a green light for even greater abuses.

The Police Act 2022 was bad enough, redefining “serious disruption” so widely that it could be applied to almost any situation, greatly increasing the penalties for acts of peaceful protest and creating a new and remarkably vague offence of “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance”, with a penalty of up to 12 months in prison. Half the people arrested at or around the coronation were detained on this charge. But the Public Order Act 2023 is much worse.

The new offences it creates have been designed to allow the police to shut down every form of effective protest. If you chain yourself to the railings or attach yourself to anything or anyone else you could be jailed for 51 weeks. If you carry equipment that the police claim could be used for such a purpose, you could also be breaking the law: at the coronation, protesters were arrested for the possession of string and luggage straps.

…gotta be honest…don’t like any part of that overmuch…the thing that tripped guy fawkes up wasn’t the lack of a 2nd amendment head-start…& we are dealing with the home of the original riot act…& talking about public order…but all the same…&…in some senses it is all the same…”going equipped” has been an offense on the books for approximately forever…which is maybe more of a property crime thing…but it’s a hop, skip & a bit of “vandalism” from the one to the other…so it isn’t entirely a new dawn of authoritarianism…except…when you already have powers on the books & you upgrade them to require less explaining yourself or showing your work…I dunno what else exactly you call that…& things that make it seem like george monbiot might not be exaggerating do not, as a rule, make me feel all calm & tranquil…even on a sunday?

The act imposes blanket bans on protests against new roads, fracking or any other oil and gas works. If, as the anti-roads protester Swampy famously did, you dig a tunnel – or even enter one – you can be imprisoned for three years.

…you gotta wonder what they’d make of a serious prepper bunker…but…that’s probably not the point

The act greatly expands the police power of suspicionless stop and search, which has been used to such discriminatory effect against black people. Anyone can now be searched if a police inspector or any other senior officer “reasonably believes” protests might happen somewhere in the area, or that someone somewhere might be carrying a “prohibited object”. If you resist a search, you can be imprisoned for 51 weeks.

The act introduces “serious disruption prevention orders”, whose purpose seems to be to take out what the police call “aggravated activists”: experienced campaigners and organisers, without whom coherent protests don’t happen. The orders impose sweeping restrictions on these people, preventing them from attending or encouraging protests, confining them to particular places, forcing them to report to police stations, prohibiting them from associating with others. They can extend, if the police and courts so choose, effectively to house arrest. They blur the line between civil standards of proof and criminal punishment: an order can be applied on a mere “balance of probabilities”, but if you breach its terms you can be imprisoned for 51 weeks. The order can last for two years, then be renewed for a further two.

…there’s…more than one way to read that “aggravated” part, I guess

The orders are among several forms of pre-emptive control and punishment permitted by the act. It necessitates a great widening of police surveillance, to identify people deemed likely to commit one of the new crimes. It has been introduced while the undercover policing inquiry, which continues to reveal appalling abuses by police spying on peaceful campaigners continues. They can do what they want to us now.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/12/coronation-protest-arrests-police

…so…anyway…you’d think that would be the talk of the town

It had all been just a bit of a coincidence. One of those things. You know how it is. You rush through a new Public Order Act and then suddenly find you’ve got a hastily arranged once in a lifetime (TM) – well maybe twice in a lifetime (TM) – coronation to police. God save the king.

Imagine the surprise. If only you had had more time to prepare officers for the new legislation then everything would have been OK. So, a few people got thrown in the nick for the best part of a day? Get over yourself. The rest of us had a great day out. Makes you proud to be British banging people up. God save the king.

Not everyone felt the same way. Some were queasy that the new Carolean age had been greeted with new limitations on the power to protest. A right that had previously been protected under the Human Rights Act. Now, not so much. So, in the Commons, it was left to the SNP’s Joanna Cherry to ask an urgent question on the policing of the coronation in London. Specifically, how six people who had previously liaised with the police and informed them of their protest should get thrown in the slammer? God save the king.

Suella Braverman was nowhere in sight – she seldom is these days, everything is too much trouble for the home secretary – so it was left to her junior, the insufferable Chris Philp, to answer on behalf of the government.[…]

…it’s a pretty ghastly dramatis personae, all in all

It had been a pity that there had been some who wanted to protest. What was wrong with these people? And the police had specifically warned him and Suella on Friday night that they had seen some women with rape alarms and some decorators out with some paint. A clear and present danger to the whole nation. God save the king.

Philp had nodded gravely but insisted he absolutely had not told the police how to conduct operations. No need when the Public Order Act had just come in to force. Or when Suella had previously bollocked the Met for not being tough enough on public disorder. It’s what Charles would have wanted. And if six people had been wrongfully arrested out of a few hundred protesters, then it was a price worth paying. Acceptable collateral damage. They should be proud to have been detained on such an auspicious day. God save the king.
[…]
There were only nine Tory backbenchers in the Commons. Presumably, the others had not yet recovered from overindulging in patriotism. Michael Ellis, a man who can give Philp a run for his money for toadying, suggested that even though the six protesters had not been guilty of a crime, it did not follow they hadn’t been planning to commit one. He is keen on thought crimes. So they were probably guilty of something. The absurd James Daly thought the police had done us a national service. It made people feel good to see others getting arrested. Even if they were innocent. Not that anyone wearing a republic T-shirt could be said to be innocent. Not on a Once in a Lifetime (TM) day like Saturday. God save the king.

There were some Tory refuseniks. David Davis reckoned there was cause and effect between the Public Order Act and six people being wrongfully arrested. Unfair, said Philp. The police just hadn’t got round to working out what they were guilty of. God save the king.

…david davis, ladies & gents…the one time voice of hardball brexit “negotiations”…the erstwhile voice of reason…or a passable imitation thereof…the fuck is going on here, people?

More surprisingly, Desmond Swayne – never one to usually speak up about civil liberties – thought it suspicious that it took 16 hours for the police to realise they had arrested the wrong people. Just long enough for all the coronation celebrations to come to an end. Philp squirmed. It had taken 16 hours to make sure they were innocent. No point letting them go too soon and then having to rearrest them. Those Velcro hooks weren’t going to investigate themselves. God save the king.

The last half hour was taken up with Labour, Lib Dem and SNP MPs raising their disquiet. Very quietly. Very deferentially. Nothing against the king and all that, but maybe it wasn’t a good idea to arrest journalists and members of the public who had permission to protest.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/09/makes-you-proud-to-be-british-banging-people-up-god-save-the-king

…I dunno about you…but I’m starting to think that we really fucked up how we calculate appropriate deference somewhere along the line

Too comatose even to take much pleasure in the arrival of Penny Mordaunt. For a while at the coronation last weekend, they had briefly thought she might be the future of their party. It’s amazing what wearing a Star Trek costume and being able to hold a sword for 50 minutes can do for you. But now they had moved on. Flatlining into the future. Even the permanently cheerful Joy Morrissey looked depressed. She used to wipe the dandruff off Boris Johnson’s collar before every PMQs. Now she’s just lost. What she would give for a few more flakes.

Nor did anyone take much notice when Theresa May walked in dressed as a Power Ranger. Fancy dress is catching these days. The Maybot had been watching the illegal immigration debate in the Lords, where she could be seen shaking her head furiously as government minister Simon Murray droned on about the horrors of too many foreigners while insisting the UK was a compassionate country.

Weird to think that she is now on the socially liberal wing of the Tory party. As home secretary, she was seen as more in Suella Braverman’s camp. Still. God loves a sinner who repenteth and all that. Though May’s new persona as champion of the underdog might be rather more convincing were she ever to actually stand up and vote against the government. When push comes to shove, she always fades into the shadows. For the good of the party. If not the country.

There was more of a stir when Andrew Bridgen turned up and headed for the Lib Dem bench. (There is only one.) Imagine being too much of a fantasist for the Conservative party. Bridgen has now joined the Reclaim party – the last refuge of the terminally deranged.

The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, was horrified at Bridgen’s appearance and immediately upped sticks and moved further down the line, leaving a demilitarised zone between him and the interloper. Later Bridgen could be seen taking selfies with the Reclaim party founder, Laurence Fox, on the Commons terrace. The body language between them was excruciating. A partnership made in hell. The chances of this lasting for more than a couple of months are nil.

It was a cheerless Rishi Sunak who entered the Commons seconds before noon. Not to mention a cheerless chamber. No one could even be bothered to go through the usual performative motions of PMQs. Rish! seemed oddly out of sorts. As if he was struggling with the basic physics of his life. He has always been used to getting what he wants. By divine right. He thinks he’s part of the meritocracy. That good things keep happening to him because he’s more able and works harder than other people.

But now he’s been forced to confront an uncomfortable reality. That no matter how many hours he puts in, he’s still not a very good prime minister. That he keeps making promises on which he fails to deliver. That he is no more the saviour of the Tory party than Johnson or Liz Truss had been. Yet again, there was far less to him than met the eye. His only discernible characteristic is an existential dread.

This wasn’t the most cerebral of PMQs. Then again, it must be quite tiring asking Sunak sensible questions only for him to fail to answer them, or just make up a series of lies. So this time out, the Labour leader just decided to have some fun. To make a series of gags designed to cheer up his own MPs and make Rish! look a bit stupid and useless. Job done, because Starmer had actually written some decent gags with decent punchlines. I know. You can teach an old dog new tricks, after all.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/10/cheerless-rish-leaves-the-commons-cold-after-election-disaster

…so…sure…take a moment to count your blessings…like…absent john crace reading about this shit would probably have long since put me wile e coyote levels of over the edge & I’d be free-falling down some mental canyon clutching an ironic placard by now

…&…I don’t even have to go to school these days…so you’d think I had nothing to worry about

It has come to this. Should HB 1147 pass, Texas eight-year-olds would be taught how to apply compression bandages and chest seals to the gaping, bloody wounds of their friends and teachers in the event of another mass shooting that many assume to be inevitable.

In a recent debate in the Texas house on the bill, Representative Ann Johnson said she understood why a fellow Democratic lawmaker had devised the scheme but expressed her profound unease about it. “It really worries me that we are training our kids that it’s acceptable for their school to become a war zone.”

There’s a lot of talk about war zones in America these days. Across the country, lives are being lost, families destroyed, communities shattered by a spate of mass shootings that are occurring with alarming frequency.
[…]
Interrogate the statistics more closely and a vicious cycle heaves into view. Mass shootings generate fear among the populace which, when amplified by paranoid conspiracy theories that the US government is poised to confiscate firearms, prompts a scramble to buy guns; in turn that increases the availability of weapons and the risk of more mass shootings.

The pattern is clearly seen in Texas, which has suffered 17 mass shootings this year alone claiming 29 victims’ lives. The month after the May 2022 Uvalde shooting, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed in Robb elementary school, FBI background checks in Texas rose 17% to an extraordinary 150,464 just in June.

A similar vicious cycle exists in the political response to mass shootings in Texas. After two 2019 gun rampages in an El Paso Walmart store and in Midland and Odessa that together killed 30 people, the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, swore to do “everything we can to make sure a crime like this doesn’t happen again”.

Abbott’s definition of “everything we can” emerged in June 2021 when he signed into law a permitless carry provision that allows Texans to pack concealed handguns in public with no license or firearms training. That too is a cyclical pattern: whenever Texas suffers a shocking gun atrocity it is a fair bet that legislative action will follow loosening its already lax gun controls.
[…]
In 2014, federal statistics report, 2,848 Texans died at the barrel of a gun. Two years later that had risen to 3,353; and by 2018 it was up to 3,522.

In 2021, 4,613 Texans died by the gun – an increase of 1,765 lives lost annually over a span of just seven years.

Like so much else in deeply divided modern America, regions of the country have been moving in starkly different directions in recent years – the conservative, rural and Republican south and west embracing a guns free-for-all while the progressive, urban, Democratic coasts and big cities tighten their gun controls. Work by the Johns Hopkins center based on 2020 federal data categorically shows that states which have adopted the most relaxed approach to gun laws now have the highest per-capita death rates – and vice versa.

Republican-controlled Mississippi had a gun death rate of 29 per 100,000, compared with that in Democrat-controlled Hawaii of just three per 100,000. That means that if you live in Mississippi you have more than an eight times greater chance of dying by the bullet than you do in Hawaii.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/13/mass-shootings-schools-guns-violence

…almost certain they call that there one of them stark distinctions

1. @RonDeSantisFL is preparing to launch his presidential campaign and he's going to start by making a mockery of campaign finance laws.

Follow along for details about how this scheme works

🧵

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) May 11, 2023

…but…there’s a lot of them about, too…& I’m running late as it is…so skipping over the existential crises & ecological non-sequiturs on the grounds that they’re just too damn depressing for a day of rest…& also not going anywhere…do we take comfort in the fact that some people clearly still have way too much time on their hands?

Shoutout to the new CEO of Elon's troubled twitter Linda Yaccarino for teaching us all about the https://t.co/57mF7xIUoN pic.twitter.com/ML8aSGHzaP

— Grae Hall (@HallGrae) May 13, 2023

…there are some serious questions posed by & to the lady who’s due to be queen of the birdcage in a month & change

Jack Posobiec, Mike Pompeo, David Sacks’ anti-Ukraine rhetoric, Matt Taibbi’s first Twitter Files thread, anti-immigrant rhetoric from Larry Elder

Twitter’s potential next CEO: pic.twitter.com/0ltRPT25q7

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) May 12, 2023

…but…that doesn’t cover the asked & answered tranche of questions out there going begging

fwiw, the top hit for image source on that bottom meme is a 2019 4chan thread about Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant. pic.twitter.com/ZclbRXtzlx

— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) May 13, 2023

…the waters you swim in are important

For years, workers across greater Paris have been implementing what is known as the Swimming Plan — an engineer’s dream, involving thousands of new underground pipes, tanks and pumps designed to prevent damaging bacteria from flowing into the Seine, particularly during storms. If successful, the plan will yield a river clean enough for Olympians and, later, citizens, to swim in.

“Do we have a 100 percent guarantee? The answer is no,” said Pierre Rabadan, the deputy mayor heading up the city’s Olympic plans, including the cleanup of the Seine in time for it to host two long-distance races and the swimming legs of the triathlon. “If it rains for a week continually before the races, we know the quality of water — even with all the work that has been done — probably won’t be excellent.”

But Rabadan also said there was no alternate plan: If the races must be postponed, organizers will simply wait a few days, test the water quality and try again.
[…]
“Have you seen the Seine?” Michael Rodrigues said from deep in a hole in a sidewalk, where he was connecting a new pipe to a house so it no longer oozed sewage into the river. “I’m not interested.”

That was not always the case. During the first Olympic Games hosted by Paris, in 1900, seven swimming events were held in the river. Even after swimming in it was banned in 1923, a year before the Games returned to the city, locals continued to dive off the Pont d’Iéna on hot summer days, the Eiffel Tower rising behind them as they cooled off in the water.

But the river became more and more polluted with sewage and industrial waste. A study in the 1990s classified the stretch running through Paris as having one of the highest heavy metal levels in the world, according to a history of the river.
[…]
The aim of every agency involved is to make the water clean enough that levels of two indicator bacteria — E. coli and intestinal enterococci — are below the standards set by the European bathing directive. Olympic standards allow for slightly higher levels, given approval of a committee.
[…]
“We are not purifying the Seine,” said Samuel Colin-Canivez, the city’s lead engineer in charge of sewage projects, as he led a tour down a freshly built tunnel that stretches under the river. “Our approach is to keep untreated water from being dumped into the Seine.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/sports/olympics/paris-olympics-seine-cleanup.html

…all in all…just managing not to muddy the waters with unadulterated shite provided in industrial quantities seems like a pretty fine start…maybe the little things will come through in the clutch…but…broad strokes?

This policy came out RIGHT after Elon demanded NPR continue to tweet after they publicly quit, then threatened to give their username away. Now if you don't use Twitter for a month you're at risk of deletion?

This is insane. Burning the site just because NPR embarrassed him. https://t.co/Weu1PZibnX

— Dragoneer (@Dragoneer) May 11, 2023

…but…in the metaphorical ouroboros routine they’re been working up to…whose rear end is getting eaten at this point?

conspiracy twitter’s meltdown over yaccarino’s connection involvement the world economic forum (i.e., the harbinger of the new world order, bug meat, etc.) is absolutely beautiful. 10/10 content pic.twitter.com/tAoBzdEb9D

— hannah gais (@hannahgais) May 12, 2023

…because somebody seems to be getting bit in the ass

https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-rise-of-generative-ai-large-language-models-llms-like-chatgpt/

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember the metaverse, which was quietly laid to rest a few weeks ago by its grieving adoptive parent, one Mark Zuckerberg. Those of you with long memories will remember how, in October 2021, Zuck (as he is known to his friends) excitedly announced the arrival of his new adoptee, to which he had playfully assigned the nickname “The Future”.
[…]
Sadly, Zuck’s promising adoptee turned out to be a sickly, feeble child. And so, on or about 18 March, he quietly had her put down. For he had just discovered that a new candidate for the role of The Future had suddenly arrived, and he was chagrined to realise that while he had been nursing the weakling, he had not noticed the newcomer on the block. It went by the name “AI”, and now Meta was lagging behind in the race to get to this new Future.

In those circumstances, you’d have thought someone who had just blown $36bn of his company’s money in the pursuit of a personal obsession would have been a mite apologetic, wouldn’t you? Not a bit of it. Why? Because he has absolute control over the company. In case you think I’m exaggerating, here’s the relevant section in the company’s annual SEC filing:

“Mark Zuckerberg, our founder, chairman, and CEO, is able to exercise voting rights with respect to a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock and therefore has the ability to control the outcome of all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. This concentrated control could delay, defer, or prevent a change of control, merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets that our other stockholders support, or conversely this concentrated control could result in the consummation of such a transaction that our other stockholders do not support … In addition, Mr Zuckerberg has the ability to control the management and major strategic investments of our company as a result of his position as our CEO and his ability to control the election or, in some cases, the replacement of our directors.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2023/may/13/death-of-mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-meta-facebook-virtual-reality-ai

…I mean…they do say corporations are people…or was that data…I forget

https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/

…what even is context, anyway

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…yeah…but…c’mon…some stuff is just too big to wrap your head around

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…sometimes a picture can help, though?

https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/trillions-what-is-a-trillion-dollars/

…never mind me

…I’m just off to go whistle past a graveyard

https://www.persuasion.community/p/why-ai-will-never-rival-human-creativity

On Generative AI and Satisficing

www.profgalloway.com/guardrails/